The need to have our heroes

Shardul Bhardwaj

Sanju’s boxoffice returns are commensurate with the rainfall that occurred in Mumbai in the week the film was released. It rains relentlessly and heavily in this city without any heed to the show timings. So the large amounts of people going to watch the film would have braved the rains and might have seen a scene which is heart-wrenching to say the least: Kids not more than six or seven years old, half-naked, running from one auto to another car trying to sell umbrellas and mobile phone covers. We like to turn away our faces in helplessness because this sight is as common as breathing for us in India and the want at hand is watching Sanju — Biography of a living star who got implicated in Mumbai blasts for sheltering arms, the star who is our answer to Charlie Sheen with his drug abuse and violent lifestyle; we, in India, like to have answers for Hollywood or anything American. The question is why does a country with 22 per cent population below the poverty line and handful showering in the so-called 7.6 per cent economic growth care about a star with drug problems or illegal arms?

Do the people not have enough to spend on that they are going against all odds to spend money on Sanju? 

This 22 per cent poverty of our country is the exact reason we need heroes to alleviate ourselves, at least in the darkness of the cinema hall where it is possible to live a dream alone while sitting with hundreds of people. To not want to be elevated, at least as an escape, is a luxury afforded by the few in the upper middle class or upper class. The ones toiling away at the bottom need their faith and their heroes, our unequal society needs heroes. The dispossessed need to see a larger-than-life figure who symbolises everything that he/she wishes to have.

The existence of our film heroes is a marker of the unequal society we live in. 

There are numerous bio-epics and biographies being made in Bollywood like Super 30 (on Anand Kumar), Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi (Rani Laxmi Bai), Soorma (on hockey legend Sandeep Singh) to name a few. Some like Mary Kom (on the boxer Mary Kom) have been made and the curious case is that in each of the above films a big star has been hired to do the role. A film on the Indian cricket victory at 1983 World Cup is being cast as of now for all roles except one: Kapil Dev, this role will be played by Ranveer Singh. Kapil Dev in the larger Indian imagination is the true hero of that victory, and hence a larger-than-life figure. He is so huge that half of India was reluctant to believe that he could have ever been involved in match fixing. For each of the other roles the casting directors are looking hard into the actors’ faces for resemblance to various other players of the team along with cricketing skills. But when it comes to the larger-than-life hero of that team we need a larger-than-life man to play it, in other words a big star, appearances can be done away with. 

So we not only need to see our idols up on the silver screen, we also need to see some big star to play it. We, the products of years of systematic looting need to escape and to idolise is the best escape. It helps one believe that one can be better than what one is in a moral and physical paradigm by sheer will. It is often said about the public heroes that they ‘inspire’ us. Every time a film like Sanju succeeds, it makes millions of this country want to live a little longer. A quote by Bertolt Brecht rings with harrowing intensity: “Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes”. 

The class of people who feel Sanju or some other biopics are unnecessary or frivolous might have good reasons to feel what they feel but they will have to investigate the causes of why such films work. To merely reject them would be a folly because such films are markers of where our society stands today. The reasons for Sanju’s success are rooted in the fact that 119 (according to Forbes magazine) people of our country are in the billionaire club while a large part of the country crawls on its fours to stay alive.

Until these state of things prevail, we as a society will engage in villainising the youth of Punjab who suffer from drug addiction and epitomising the high and the mighty. We would send everybody afflicted with addiction and less money to the margins. This way the status quo will be maintained, we will sleep in peace as we look upon the youth of Punjab or Mumbai as deviants while we wait eagerly for a biopic on Salman Khan, come what may Bollywood as a general rule has distaste for delving into reasons for existence of evil in our society. It likes to glamourise the evil and take pole positions of morality.